Alaska Trip Report

  May 17 - May 31, 2005

      Me and Dale and McFly drove to Alaska on a 15-day, 7000 mile trip. I did all of the driving. The main goals of the trip were to drive the entire famous Alaska highway and the infamous Dalton Highway to the Arctic Ocean. I had made plans to do this in 1997, but luck was against me. My current situation made it again a possibility, one that I may not have again until retirement.
      I planned to go very early in the tourist season, but not so early as to possibly run into inclement weather. As it turned out, I timed it very well. There was a fair amount of rain, but it was mostly warm weather, and very very little traffic. For preparation, I built my own rooftop storage box. I probably didn't save any money over buying one, but it was an excuse to use my welder, and it was a fun project. The contents were mostly emergency stuff and I only had to delve into it once during the trip, to retrieve some ramen noodles I had stashed in there. I definitely didn't bring enough clothes. And a chair would have been nice for camping.

rough outline of route

DAY 1 - Home to Banff, AB - 537 miles

      The start day had an unusual start. The alarm went off at 5 am, and I had to get up to cross the room to turn off the alarm. I hit the snooze and was standing there deciding whether to jump back in bed for a few more z's or not, when the outside flood lights came on. They're the motion-detector type, so something was moving around out there, so I looked out the windows and a big black bear was walking around outside. I went to the front door for a better look (luckily it was too early in the morning for the dogs to be active, so they didn't even get out of bed). The bear walked around in the yard, then came up on the porch. He was about two feet from me on the other side of the door, and my pulse rate went way up, and I was trying to remember in the movie with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin if the bear busted through the front door on them, but I couldn't remember. I did remember, however, that normally I keep two loaded handguns in the house, but this one particular time, I had hid them in the garage the night before for safekeeping while I was out of town. So all I had was bear spray, and I didn't know offhand where it was. But the bear walked around the porch then meandered off into the night. I waited awhile before letting the dogs out. Boy could they smell the recent presence of the bear. They were all hackled and running around the place looking.
      I was about two hours from home, just north of Whitefish, Montana when I took a detour into Whitefish Lake State Park to exercise the dogs. As I got out of the car, I heard the hissing of air, and looked at my left rear tire, and saw a screw sticking out. I had brought an extra spare tire and was thinking how inauspicious this was, but luckily I was more than prepared. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad sign. It was a cold, rainy day, and I had parked right next to a lake, and I told the dogs to stay out of the water. About the time that I popped the trunk to get out the lug wrench to change the tire, I heard the dogs splashing around in the lake. Alas. I would actually find a place for them to swim almost every day on this road trip. When you have high-energy dogs like mine but you are on the road, swimming provides a big bang for the buck for exercise. If they can swim for 30 minutes, they pass out in the car and sleep like the dead for hours.
      I changed out the tire, and found a park ranger and asked him where I could get the tire repaired in Whitefish. I had to drive back into town to find the place, then they told me I had to wait a half-hour. But at least they didn't charge me for it. Then I swapped it back out for my spare and realized I'd lost about two hours on all this.
      About an hour later I was at the Canadian border. I was ready with passport, birth certificate, rabies papers for the dogs, and car registration and insurance. But all the guard did was ask me "Do you have any alcohol, tobacco, or firearms? How much cash are you carrying? Where are you going?" to which I replied "None of your business!" or maybe something more truthful and he waved me through.
      The start of the Alaska Highway is at Dawson Creek, British Columbia. There was no very direct route from home to Dawson Creek, but the route that I was extremely glad that I chose was the Icefields Parkway that runs through Banff, Jasper, and Mt. Robson National Parks. This was without a doubt the most scenic drive I have ever taken. The Rocky Mountains are bigger and more awe-inspiring here than in Montana and Colorado. Plus the drive takes you right through the middle of them, and they are right off of the roadside, not way off in the distance. There's many glaciers and rivers and lakes and wildlife. It's just outstanding, and since it's only a day's drive from home, I will undoubtedly be back.
      I was heading north out of Banff and in the middle of the park was a gas station where I filled up. The attendant was a good salesman. There was an adjacent hotel, and he told me that the rates here were alot less than in Jasper, the next town up where I had planned on finding a hotel. So I stayed there. It was a nice place for only like $50 (fortunately I timed this trip before the summer rate hike). There was a nice long path behind the place with outstanding vistas all around that me and the dogs enjoyed this evening and the next morning.

DAY 2 - Banff, AB to Fort St. John, BC - 486 miles

      Since this was a vacation (from what?), we didn't get an early start, and in fact, we seldom did on any day of this trip. After leaving the park land, which was scenic, we took a rural highway, also scenic. I could probably start leaving out the word "scenic" because it pertains to basically everywhere I drove on this trip. This was one of the few days in Canada where it didn't rain. But generally when it did, which was alot, it was just for a few minutes.
      We eventually wound up at Dawson Creek, the official start of the Alaska Highway, where I'd planned on getting a hotel room for the 2nd night, but I couldn't find one that looked right, so we drove 45 miles or so down the highway to the next town, Fort St. John, where we found a nice hotel easily.
      We found a nice city park and took a long walk. We watched generation x-ers in a little skateboard park. It was already evident that the days were longer here at these latitudes. We were probably out until 10:00 with ample daylight. I bought a sub sandwich for dinner.
      Also this was the first of two times I could set the clock back on my trip, which was nice while travelling because of the free bonus time.
      I'd like to say something here about driving in Canada. For the first day or so, I was getting mentally tired of all of the math. Everytime I would see a speed limit sign, I'd have to multiply the kilometers per hour number by .6 to get the miles per hour (I don't like trying read the little kilometers per hour numbers on my speedometer). But after doing this enough, and they really only use about 6 different speed limits, I didn't have to do the math anymore. But the mile markers were another story. All my life, driving in the U.S., distance was time. In America, when I see a mile marker, I'd automatically divide by 60 to get the time to the destination, since 60 mph is a good guesstimation of average speed on the highway when you include pit stops. Here, I was having to multiply the kilometers by .6 in my head to get the miles, then divide that number by 60 to get the hours. The average highway speed in Canada is 100 kilometers per hour (about 62 miles per hour). What is dumb is that I was basically multiplying and dividing by the same number in my head for several days without even realizing it. When I did, it was an epiphany. The kilometer signs were telling you the time without any math. If you were doing 100 kilometers per hour and the distance was 150 kilometers, the time was 1.5 hours. All you had to do was put a decimal point in there! It was so cool. And I thought about how cool that would be in America, but I am so conditioned to dividing every mile marker mileage by 60 without thinking, that it would be no big deal.

DAY 3 - Fort St. John, BC to Watson Lake, YT - 582 miles

      This is where I finally got to begin to appreciate the Alaska Highway for the achievement that it was. The United States Army built the Alaska Highway during World War II to more readily provide artillery and equipment to defend Alaska against the Japs. The Army engineers built the entire Alaska Highway, all 1422 miles of it, in something like 8 days and under constant gunfire from the Japs. Very impressive.
      Even though Alaska was the ultimate destination, I found that BC and the Yukon were far more scenic. The topography never ceased to captivate. It just has every type of rocky and wooded mountain ranges and fast rivers and vast stands of spruce and fir. I saw most wildlife in the Canadian section of the Alcan Highway. I probably saw more black bear than anything, but plenty of deer and moose and dall sheep and buffalo. I never saw an elk which was a small letdown. The dogs didn't see much wildlife because they typically weren't watching out of the windows alot. Several times when I had to stop for sheep to cross the road, I'd open the window enough for the dogs to stick their heads out to bark at them. Once we got past them and the sheep disappeared in the distance behind us, Dale would just sit looking out the back window for a long time. I guess she was waiting for them to reappear, but she just didn't seem to get the fact that we were travelling away from them.
      There's not too many places in America where you can't pick up a radio station. I'd say 95% of my journey had no radio stations. I'd try to pick up something by selecting "scan", and the radio tuner would just race around and around the dial without hitting anything. Sometimes I'd forget about it and just drive and think for long periods and an hour later it would lock into a station and it would break the silence and startle the hell out of me.
      I remembered several times a Steven Wright skit: "Me and a friend drove cross country. We changed drivers every 1/2 mile. We only brought one cassette tape that we listened to over and over. I got so sick of it. I don't remember what it was."
      I hadn't considered the lack of radio stadions and music too much beforehand. Leaving the house, almost as an afterthought, I grabbed a couple of cassette tapes. In retrospect, I wish I had brought every tape I owned. I had already listened to all of them several times within the first couple of days since there was nothing on the radio, and that included alot of driving in silence. I eventually would just put a tape in and let it play 3 or 4 times in a row since I had so much time to fill and putting in another tape was hardly something new. For the record, I brought two Big Country tapes, Van Halen's 1984 (which sadly died midway through the trip), Foreigner's Head Games, and Molly Hatchet:

Many roads I've travelled
They all kinda look the same
There's a gator in the bushes
Lord, he's calling my name!

DAY 4 - Watson Lake, YT to Tok, AK - 678 miles

      This wound up being one of the longest distance driving days because there is really nothing between these two places except Whitehorse which is a big town and the capital of the Yukon, but it is in the middle and I wouldn't want to stop for the day in the middle of the afternoon, so it became a marathon day of driving, something like 12 hours.
      The Alaska Highway is a surprisingly good road considering its extreme length and remoteness. It is almost all 100 kph speed limit with the treeline cut way back from the road which helps enormously to spot wildlife before they are a road hazard and also to see the distant scenery. The road only gets maintenance during the short summer months, and there was quite a bit going on. The best thing about the road crews was they always had attractive young women as flagmen. Typically work was being done on one lane at a time, often for a considerable length of road, so you might be stuck waiting to go through for as long as 10 minutes. But the good part was, if you were first to be stopped, the flag-girl would usually talk to you to pass the time. It was like another world.
      I arrived at the U.S. border of Alaska around 9 PM. It was a little more formal than the Canadian border crossing because the guard actually wanted to see some ID and the dogs' rabies certification.
      I arrived at the next town, Tok, about 90 minutes later, but with the time change (again), it was only 9:30. We found a hotel that would take dogs on the second try, which was nice since there were only two hotels in town. And there was one restaurant and it had take-out and I got a BLT.
      There was still plenty of daylight at midnight when I went to pee the dogs before bed. It never really got dark the whole time I was in Alaska. I read that at solstice which was still a month away, the daylight at that latitude was 22 hours long.

DAY 5 - Tok, AK to Fairbanks, AK - 225 miles

      This was a relatively short driving day because I had some preparation for the Dalton Highway.
      The Dalton Highway was built in the early 1970's to support the oil field at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean and the Alaskan pipeline that runs from Prudhoe Bay to the Prince William Sound. Originally just called the haul road, it starts about 80 miles north of Fairbanks and runs 414 miles due north to Deadhorse, just shy of the Arctic Ocean. It was opened to the public in 1995. It is an almost entirely unpaved primitive road, and has very little services along the way (basically only one town in the middle and a gas station at Deadhorse).
      So it was prudent for me to prepare for this journey. I got an oil change at a Quik Lube and went to a grocery store and bought 2 1/2 gallons of water, wheat thins, and some vienna sausages.
      Fairbanks had a terrific little state park right near my hotel on the Chena River. Fortunately, it wasn't a fast-moving river and the dogs enjoyed swimming in it and walking the park numerous times since we wound up spending alot of time in Fairbanks on this trip.

DAY 6 - The Haul Road

      The Dalton Highway was about as bad as imaginable. When you hear "gravel road" you might think of something relatively smooth. This road will beat you to death. There is a signpost at the beginning: speed limit 50 mph the next 414 miles, but I could only manage 30-40 miles per hour for the next 3 days I was on it. It was brutal. Gravel would have been just fine with me, but this road was potholes from side to side that you couldn't avoid, washboard, and what was worse was embedded rocks. Evidently, when they laid the road, they just threw in any aggregate they could find. And as the finer particles wore away, these large rocks are left, as big as a fist are sticking up. You are continually bounced, rocked, and battered all over the place. At the end of each day I am on this road, my ears are ringing.
      Strangely, every so often, there will be pavement. Just out of nowhere and in the middle of nowhere you will encounter pavement, and with a big smile, you just lay down on the gas pedal to enjoy some normal comfortable driving and some speed and as soon as you get going, you will round a corner or crest a hilltop and there will be a big break in the pavement or a sea of potholes or an abrupt end to the pavement. Despite their best intentions, the highway folks who pour the asphalt can do nothing to prevent the frigid winter temperatures from freezing the soil and buckling the asphalt. But you hope for the best when you're on them, because before long, they end and you weren't much better off anyway.
      The haul road provides maintenance access for the Alaskan Pipeline. It's pretty cool to see how the engineers devised the means for the pipeline to cross mountains or rivers or go underground for wildlife passage. When the pipeline goes up the side of a mountain, it zigzags all the way up. When I saw that, I was thinking, "Boy, those pipefitters sure had alot of 45's to use up!" (45's are elbow couplings for pipes). Then I read later that the zigzags help the pipeline expand and contract without stressing joints. Driving all of those many hours and many miles with the pipeline generally always somewhere in sight, I can really appreciate the feat of engineering it took to lay that 800+ miles of pipeline and get oil pumping all within something like 8 days.
      About a hundred miles from the start of this highway is the arctic circle. There is a pullout with a nice sign for you to take your picture in front of. I did and I noticed my left front tire looked low. I checked it, and it was only like 15 psi, so I changed it out, and saw it had a nail in it.
      The road just goes and goes and never gets any better, but you are there for the adventure, so you just keep driving. I stopped at the one town along the way, Coldfoot, and filled up with gas and got two sandwiches for later. I struck up a conversation with a woman at the gas pump who lived nearby. I asked her if the road got any better further north and she said "No."
      Heading north, the road continued to be bad, but the scenery was what I came to see. The Brooks Range form the last features before the North Slope and the tundra that stretches to the Arctic Ocean. The Brooks Range are beautiful in their starkness. Unlike alot of mountains with patches of vegetation, these mountains are a uniform brown with snow and quite jagged as if they haven't been around too many eons to be worn smooth.
      I was noticing two things the farther north I drove: it was getting colder and there weren't any Holiday Inns around. Honestly there was nothing. You might see a pump station for the pipeline every 80 miles or so, but that was it. You might see a trucker once an hour coming the other way. But I was aware and prepared for a night out on the tundra, or so I thought.
      We found a pulloff next to the Atigun River just north of the biggest mountain pass in the Brooks Range called Atigun Pass. It was about 9:30 at night and the sun was well up in the sky as it would be for another four months or so. The temperature was probably around 30 and the wind was blowing hard. I put on everything I had, but I was still cold. So I just sat on the ground wrapped in a blanket for an hour looking at the bleak scenery while the dogs sniffed around the tundra.
      I was on the lookout for nasty critters who might want to eat my dogs, which was fairly easy as there were no trees anymore this far north so I could see very far in all directions. I was therefore surprised when the dogs started barking, and I looked back behind me and a cyclist had passed by on the road on his own adventure with large luggage bags astride each wheel. I wished he had stopped to talk. The silence was overwhelming.
      Here is a journal entry: "I was thinking the past several hours that this was the loneliest place I've ever been to. It is pretty, but not entirely cheerful. Sitting in the back of the Gubaru now. Warm except for toes. Dogs don't mind. Saw several moose today but nothing else. Hope we don't see anything here. It's 10:30 and the sun is still well above the horizon. Clouds are in front now. No big deal since the sun wasn't providing much heat."
      Later: "11 PM and it's as bright as an average 5 PM. Bout to crash. Very cold. Dogs keep hearing things and barking, but there's nothing around."
      Finally I got in my light sleeping bag in the back of the car and went to sleep. Woke up about a half-hour later shivering. McFly was laying against me and he was shivering and I have never seen him shiver and he loves the cold. So I arranged one extra blanket over me and another over him and Dale and tried to sleep. But I pretty much just laid there and shivered. I didn't really sleep any more that night. Every so often when I needed to roll over, I would have to sit up and re-adjust the little stadium blanket back over me, so I really had a chance to observe that, yes, the sun never set all night.

DAY 7 - still on The Haul Road

      Finally couldn't stand any more of it, so I jumped out of the car around 6 AM in howling wind and snow flurries. It took about 10 minutes to get the car re-arranged for travel, and it was probably the coldest 10 minutes I ever experienced.
      It crossed my mind briefly that I wasn't having much fun and heading south would get me out of all of this, but I was compelled to finish this thing, so we headed north. It took another 4 1/2 hours to finally get to Deadhorse and the end of the road.       By the luck of the draw, this was a pretty crappy day to be here. As I mentioned, it was cold, windy, foggy, and snowing lightly. Visibility was not great. The mountains became featureless tundra. Occasionally I saw caribou and squawking birds and two arctic foxes. Despite the atypical aspect of being in such a strange place, I wasn't altogether happy about being there.
      When I finally got to Deadhorse, it was evident that this was no tourist destination. There was no welcome center or even a welcome sign. It was all industrial buildings and equipment and stacks of pipe dedicated to oil production. I was needing to fill up with gas, and eager to talk to a gas station attendant and ask about a hundred questions and eat a hot meal. But I was dismayed that the only gas station here was completely automated. Swipe your card, and, as a sign said, if you have any problems pick up the phone but the call would cost you.
      There is one hotel there that I was aware of, and since the oil field and access to the Arctic Ocean is restricted, this hotel gave tours, but not starting until June and this was May. It had been part of my plan to get down to the ocean for the bragging rights, but at this point, I seriously didn't care anymore. I parked the car behind the hotel and fed the dogs some very cold canned food, and then snapped a few pictures of ugly industrial buildings while trying to stay warm. The dogs love snow and were rolling in it and chasing each other. After about 30 minutes of being at the top of the world, I eagerly pointed the car south.
      Quite a few hours down the road, I had my third flat tire of the trip - the second for this road. Whereas the first two had been punctures, this time the tire was severely blown out. A chunk of the tread had lifted and you could see shredded steel belt. This set of tires only had just over 20,000 miles on them, and I knew by looking at this that I would replace them all asap since I had evidently way overstressed them. So I put on my last spare tire and crossed my fingers that I could get to have the flat with the nail in it repaired in Coldfoot before another flat occurred.
      I have to point out while I was changing out the tire, since traffic was so scarce and I could hear them coming from a long ways away, I just let the dogs go loose. There was caribou in the distance that Dale started to go after, but I yelled at her to stay nearby. I noticed shortly after that a young little caribou had come up relatively close, like 100 feet away and was apparently teasing or being playful with Dale. It would kind of jump and prance around and stop to see what Dale would do, and it took alot of yelling to keep Dale from running up to it. It was pretty cool to watch, and I did for awhile, but by the time it dawned on me to take a picture, the caribou had run off.
      Travelling the 414 miles to get to Deadhorse had taken me roughly 19 hours, so there was no way I would be off of the road today, so I checked my guide book and there was a town called Wiseman (population 20) that was about halfway down and off the road a ways, and there were cabins there for rent. After about 8 hours, we arrived and found the place. The same woman that I had met at the gas pump the day before ran the place. She said she normally doesn't accept dogs and could they sleep in the car. I said no, but I'd keep them off of the bed, which was a bold-faced lie. The cabins were great and way off in the woods behind her house and I was the only one there. Before I left her, I asked if she had room service. Of course she said no, so I mumbled that that was okay because I had vienna sausages and crackers. After I got settled into the room, she brought me a Hot Pocket out of pity and I was greatly appreciative. Also, there was a washer and dryer there, and as I was out of clean clothes, this was pretty awesome.
      My dogs shed like crazy this time of year, and I brushed them almost every day on this trip. When I got up the next morning, there was dog hair all over the bed, so I left the woman an apology note and a big tip.

DAY 8 - Wiseman, AK to Fairbanks, AK - 528 miles

      Today was a day of rejoicing because A) I was getting off of the haul road and B) enjoy the sights because I was getting off of the haul road. It did take most of the day. When I got to Coldfoot, I got the garage mechanic to fix my punctured tire. Everytime I had seen this done, they just run a plug with glue in the hole and they are done in like 5 minutes and it costs between nothing and $15. This guy, who was some native american, patched it from the inside which took quite awhile, but it was certainly a better fix. We talked for a long time while he was doing it. Most of his work was fixing flats, he said, and he doesn't waste time on plugging holes. It cost $40, and the sad part was that I knew that was my secondary spare that when I got home I would give back to the tire shop, and I would never use it.
      It was a fine weather day and bright sunshine and I enjoyed the sights immensely. I was off of the haul road at 3:08 PM and back in Fairbanks about an hour and a half later. I figured driving the 828 miles of the haul road had taken me around 38 hours for an average speed of about 22 mph.

DAY 9 - Fairbanks, AK to Wasilla, AK - 325 miles

      First thing was to get new tires. I knew it would take time at a tire shop, so I took the dogs to the park first for an hour or so to get their exercise out of the way. We walked around alot and they got to swim in the river.
      At the tire shop, after I talked to the guy for awhile and I selected which new tires, and he told me it would take about an hour and a half, I said I'd be waiting somewhere outside with my dogs, and he suggested I walk about two blocks to a park. This sounded alot better than sitting in a parking lot, so we went there and it just happened to be on the same river as the other park we had just been at. So I let them swim for basically another hour, and I sat enjoying watching them and the warm sunshine. So they got two swims in in one day and slept like gangbusters hereafter.
      Picked up the car and headed southwest toward Anchorage. This would take us through Denali National Park. This was, again, a very scenic drive, but oddly, with the addition of alot more trees and snow, it looked like Montana. I saw McKinley and Forester and the other major peaks, but they were so far from the highway, and I wasn't into heading off the highway for some woodsy adventures with bears versus two small dogs, so I kept driving.
      Later in the day when it was about quitting time, we were in a small town about 30 miles north of Anchorage and checked into a hotel there.

DAY 10 - Wasilla, AK to Homer, AK - 220 miles

      The next destination was the Gulf of Alaska. The highway that ends at Homer leads south out of Anchorage and basically hugs the coast of the Kenai Peninsula the whole way. It was fairly scenic with really big mountains all along the way, but the weather was overcast and cold and rainy with low clouds hiding the mountain tops. We had a nice respite for a walk in a campground somewhere.
      We got to Homer (self proclaimed "Halibut Capital of the World") and followed the highway where it ended on this mile-long spit of land extending out into the Cook Inlet of the Gulf of Alaska. It had some touristy shops and fishing boats and I ducked into a sandwich shop and got a halibut fish sandwich to go (which was very good) and ate it while the dogs sniffed the ocean shoreline. As I mentioned they love to swim, but they also have to drink alot of whatever they are swimming in, and after a taste, they got out quick. Evidently they had forgotten their identical experience in Maine 4 years ago. But their first love is sniffing everything and ideally finding something remotely organic to eat despite how much I yell at them not to, and the beach offered boocoo opportunities.
      I had more trouble finding a hotel here than anywhere else. I went to 4 different places that either didn't allow pets or had all of their pet rooms occupied. When I was losing hope I finally found a place and as a bonus it was quite cheap. I was feeling pretty smug until I walked in the room. It wasn't much bigger than the queen sized bed. It had dark wood walls and nautical decorations, and I imagined it to be patterned after a room on a boat where there isn't surplus room. Just walking around meant saying "excuse me, excuse me" to the dogs on the floor. The TV was hung from the wall at the foot of the bed, and due to a lack of space for a desk, there was a shelf right above the head of the bed. So to watch TV you had to lay on the bed laying down because of the annoying shelf. And you only sat up once without heeding it as I did when I cracked my head on it.
      But this place was right on the water, and we enjoyed a nice walk on the beach in the afternoon and before bed and again the next morning before splitting town. It was well worth it.

DAY 11 - Homer, AK to Tok, AK - 633 miles

      This was a big mileage day because we were going home finally. We'd been on every major road (there aren't many in Alaska) and saw all we had come to see. I had considered doing some car-camping on this peninsula, but for the entire memorial day weekend, the forecast was for cloudy, cold, and rainy, so there wasn't much fun to be had in hanging around.
      We finally got inland and the weather improved nicely. On one section of road under repair, a truck threw up gravel which cratered my windshield. Since I am not the typical tourist with the need to purchase refrigerator magnets, shot glasses, and t-shirts from places I visit, my "souvenirs" from alaska are 4 new tires and a cracked windshield.
      This long long drive through the interior of the state was pretty but not entirely awe-inspiring. Mainly just vast stretches of rolling and wooded land with nothing else. And listening to the same old tapes since there was no radio stations. I ate a burrito from a taco bell at one of the few outposts of humanity along the way.
      I stayed at the same hotel in Tok as a week earlier and the lady at the desk remembered me and said to keep the dogs off of the bed this time, and I said sure no problem. These people are so gullible. I got another take-out BLT from the same place as before, Fast Eddie's.

DAY 12 - Tok, AK to Watson Lake, YT - 666 miles

      This was a reverse trip from what I had done 8 days earlier. I had considered taking an alternate route northeast into Yukon to Dawson City, but I read in my guide book that the road was mostly gravel and required a ferry across a river. I had had enough of crappy gravel roads, so I decided to just drive back on the Alaska Highway since it was mostly a good road and I wouldn't be sacrificing much since I enjoyed it so much the first time.
      When I drove through this western part of Yukon before, it was raining like crazy, so there wasn't alot of sightseeing and photo-ops. But this time the weather and the scenery was terrific, especially Kluane Lake. We stopped here for a long time and I let the dogs swim. The water was the prettiest blue and the shoreline was all small rocks, so the dogs never got muddy. I took this one picture and unfortunately I hadn't noticed it was my last one. And I looked, and I had no more rolls of film left or I would have taken more pictures of dogs frolicking in pretty blue water by a rocky shore.
      With the stinking time change, I arrived at Watson Lake at 11 PM.

DAY 13 - Watson Lake, YT to Fort St. James, BC - 561 miles

      Again, I was considering an alternate route for additional scenery and adventure. From here there is a road that goes roughly south for a thousand miles to Prince George, BC and it looked interesting until my guide book told me it was gravelly and twisty and mountainous, so I declined. The British Columbia along the Alaska Highway was definitely pretty enough for me.
      Again, another terrific day weather-wise. Muncho Lake (yes that's the name) was the prettiest lake I'd encountered. We had another vast rocky shoreline with no mud to ourselves. The water was so clear, when McFly would swim out for sticks that I'd thrown, he looked like he was hovering 10 feet off of the ground. I was really kicking myself for having no film for my camera, especially since I had been in several gas stations since running out of film the day before, but I kept forgetting to buy more.
      Later in the day, the sky darkened, and rain and lightning started. There was one time during the storms that I could see from this big flat-topped mountain a big plume of smoke pouring off. I was wondering what that smoke could be from and at that same instant, I saw lightning hit the mountain very near to where the smoke was coming from. And I thought to myself "well that answers that!"
      All of these days of putting so many hours on the road were taking a toll. Here is a trick that I invented years ago: if you are ever driving and drowsiness becomes a real problem, reach back with one hand and grab a fistful of hair on the back of your head and pull. Pull hard and with alot of hair it will be difficult to make it hurt, but try. Hold it for up to a minute or so, and your drowsiness will be gone. It sounds silly but it can be a lifesaver. I had to do this alot during this long road trip and many in the past and it has never failed to work.

DAY 14 - Fort St. James, BC to Jasper, AB - 540 miles

      This was a big divergence from the route that I took coming north. I went southwest to Prince George and got on highway 16 east to Jasper. I was thinking I'd make better time on this route, but guess what, I didn't. But British Columbia is such a pretty country, and I passed through all of these small towns along the way, and I was envious of the residents that they had such gorgeous mountains all around. I have mountains in Montana, but these were always somehow bigger and greener.
      We stopped at a provincial park for a swim. This one was at McLeod Lake and what a difference. As soon as I got out of my car, I started getting bit by mosquitoes. I went back to the car for a head mosquito net, but for the next 45 minutes, it was a constant battle to keep them off of my arms. The dogs didn't care since there was water. McFly always wants me to throw sticks or rocks in the water to give him a reason to run and jump in and swim. He generally comes out of the water, shakes off, and then gives me a single bark to tell me to throw something. Oddly, this lake had an echo, and when he'd bark at me, a half-second later he'd hear a bark from across the lake, then he'd stop and look and look across the lake, then forget about it and bark at me again. He did this time and time again, and never figured it out. I thought it was hilarious.
      When I finally got to Jasper, I was not entirely happy that it was a premier resort town. Alot of very nice stylish hotels, that looked pricey and pet-rejecting. But I was tired and this was our last night on the road, and the third place I tried did accept pets, and charged me $120 which was by far the most I'd spent on a room on this whole trip. Besides being a super-nice room, this place had a nice lawn in the back for the dogs and a mountain slope with rocks for them to climb on. I climbed up and encouraged them to do the same. They mulled around a little bit then just stopped and it seemed they weren't too happy with this. I remembered the time I watched them try to cross a cattle grate. It was the funniest thing. They'd walk out with their front feet just fine, but when their back feet would maybe touch something solid or maybe not, they'd just stop and look at me. Despite me telling them to merely look back and see where to place their feet, they were essentially stuck. Here it was similar with sketchy places to try to coordinate where to put four feet, it was just too much for them, so I went further down the hill, and they just kept going down to where it was flat and easier going.
      On this entire trip, because of dogs, I never took a sit-down meal in a restaurant. My diet was pretty poor with mostly take-out food, convenience store sandwiches, or clif bars. This time I got room service from the hotel's restaurant, and ordered a steak sandwich. This was probably the best-tasting steak I have ever had. I couldn't believe how good it tasted. Maybe it was the lack of anything decent for two weeks.
      Since this room was costing me so much, I made the most of it by staying up way too late watching TV. I don't remember what I watched, but in general, the best thing about hotels is watching cable stations, since I don't have cable at home. This was the only hotel where the battery cover wasn't missing off of the remote.

DAY 15 - Jasper, AB to home - 549 miles

      This morning I had a vivid dream where I was leaving some job that I had evidently enjoyed greatly. There were images of going through desk detritus and reminiscing about the stories they told, and saying goodbye to co-workers and just feeling sad about leaving. After waking up and thinking about it, it wasn't hard to realize the dream had been about the trip and how much I enjoyed doing it and how I didn't really want it to end.
      I checked out of the hotel and got a nutri-grain bar from a convenience store for breakfast, and enjoyed the several hour drive out of the Canadian Rockies. We stopped for the dogs to swim in a mountain lake that was still half-covered in ice. They didn't seem to mind. Later, with no food resources available, I ate wheat thins for lunch and wasn't entirely satisfied.
      There wasn't much to this day afterwards except making the time and distance to home. Just before the border, it started to rain and rained pretty much the whole time until I got home. The U.S. border crossing was slow this time, as the folks ahead of me appeared to be questioned at length, then their vehicles were searched. We finally got up there, and the lady with a Glock on her hip asked me the same old questions about what I had with me and then started asking about the Corgis and talking about how much she like Corgis and she started petting McFly through the window then let us go. What a sap!
      The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent taciturnly and dully getting the rest of the uneventful miles behind. Arrived home around 9 PM to a cold dark house.

Epilogue

      Total mileage was 7046. Average miles per day was 470. Did I ever get tired of all of that driving? Not really. Was it worth it? Yes. Would I do it again? Probably not.